Coursera

Thinking about sustainable business systemically (Coursera)

Offered by The Open University,

On this course, you’ll examine the process, methodology and impact of global circular economy initiatives. You’ll use systems thinking and mapping to understand the underlying dynamics and interaction of your problem-opportunity space and explore the likely impacts and effects of changing and/or influencing key elements of your systems. You’ll also identify key ‘leverage points’ of potential change across your systems map that you can address through future business interventions.

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Via text-based resources and task books, you’ll gain comprehensive understanding and benefit from in-depth reference points as you formulate your ideas and plans.
This course is part of the Sustainability for business success Specialization.

What you'll learn

Go beyond the limitations of existing methodologies and business design approaches to serve complex ecosystem needs and problems
Design and implement new sustainable business concepts and business models grounded in People, Planet, Profit and Progress centric thinking and doing

Syllabus

Welcome to the course
This week, you will learn about the benefits of a circular economy and examine what steps you should take to frame a specific challenge before you attempt to solve it.

Systems thinking and sustainability spaces
This week, you will address complex issues within multi-stakeholder settings, often with divergent perspectives. You will learn how to create, map and analyse problems across stakeholders using systems thinking to understand complex dynamics and their interrelatedness across your chosen challenge space.

Developing your systems map
This week, you will pick up threads from the three preceding lessons and move on to building a systems map related to your challenge space.

Refining your systems map
This week, you will decide what to include and exclude from your map given the underlying complexities of your stakeholder ecosystem, and decide where you might need to intervene within your system.

Go to Class

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